Magic Leap Leak Reveals Working Prototype

By Adnan Farooqui on 02/12/2017 12:25 PDT

Not much is known about the product that Magic Leap, a startup valued at $4.5 billion, is working on. What we do know is that the product is going to augment human vision with digital imagery. A new report brings us a leaked photo of what’s claimed to be a working prototype of Magic Leap’s portable augmented reality device. It doesn’t appear to be more than a backpack, but then again, that’s not that the final product is going to be.

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Business Insider received this image and the prototype was described to it as “the real wearable.” It’s said that this is what the prototype looked like last month and that some improvements have been made to it since then.

Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz is due to demonstrate a working prototype before the startup’s board next week and the one he’ll use is said to look more finished than what you see in the photo.

Abovitz also took to Twitter to address this leaked photo, saying that this prototype is “NOT what you think it is.” He says that the photo shows a Magic Leap R&D test rig which is used to collect room/space data for the company’s machine vision/machine learning work, adding that the company does this to “understand lighting, texture, various surfaces.”

Nevertheless, Magic Leap’s prototype is said to be a long way from being a market-ready product so it can’t really be said right now when Magic Leap will be able to bring its augmented reality technology to the masses.